


The Queen's General

by nire



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Gen, Motherhood, Sisterhood, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire
Summary: Antiope, in three parts.





	The Queen's General

**Author's Note:**

> I just watched Wonder Woman and though I like it very, very much, I think there needs to be more Antiope. And so it is 4 AM and I just finished writing whatever this is and it is very unbeta-ed, but I hope still readable. Enjoy!

**1.**

It has been the longest day yet, in this longest war.

Aphrodite was slain. The last of Zeus’ offspring, Ares’ own beloved, dead by his own sword. Antiope saw it with her own eyes, and she could swear he had wept, or it might have been a battle-cry. There were tears, or they might have been blood and sweat. The sun was high above them, merciless, and Antiope’s voice was hoarse as she yelled the retreat.

Now she is ensconced in her tent. Menalippe has brought her a basin of water and a washcloth, but she pays it no heed. There is a war to end, Antiope tells herself, bent over the map she has committed to memory. She no longer dreams of victory; only an end.

Menalippe comes in again, bearing bread, dried fruits, and wine, and leaves without a word. Antiope reaches for the wine.

She hears someone enter again, and she thinks it might be Menalippe returning for yet another errand, but then the visitor announces herself by saying, “Pour another for me.”

Antiope does so and hands the second goblet to Hippolyta. They clink goblets and drink. The wine is sour, and yet this must be the best they have, or else it would not have reached the general’s tent.

Setting the empty goblet back on the tray, Antiope takes a good look at her sister. There is something about Hippolyta that strikes Antiope as odd, but not quite. Hippolyta is as she always is: clean and untouched by carnage, composed, graceful. She is queen for a reason; of all Amazons, she is the closest one to the image of a goddess. Even now, in a dirt-floored tent drinking sour wine out of a pewter goblet, she is a picture of nobility.

It is only when Hippolyta bent to place her own empty goblet next to the other one, and her hair falls like a curtain closing after a play, that Antiope realizes what it is she missed.

Hippolyta is wearing a perfume, which in itself is odd, but more so when Antiope notices that underneath the scent of flowers and ambergris she smells like sweat and sex.

Antiope jerks back. “You lay with him.” It is not meant to be an accusation, but as it escapes her lips it becomes one anyway.

Hippolyta folds her hands over her middle. “He is dying.”

Antiope says nothing. She refills both goblets, then she takes one and leaves the other on the tray. She does not drink, instead twirling her goblet slowly, the murky libation swishing.

“He will try to end it tomorrow and take down Ares with him. If he succeeds, the war will end. If he does not,” Hippolyta pauses, then looks down to her folded hands, “only a god can kill another god.”

Antiope chuckles, and it is an empty thing. “Then let us hope he succeeds, lest our fate rests in the fists of a suckling babe.”

 

 

(Later, when their moods have been lightened by the food and the wine, meager fare though it was, Antiope remarks, “You do not act like a woman well-tumbled, sister.”

Hippolyta bristles. “I should hope not. I did not wish to derive pleasure from forging a weapon, and so I refused all his comforts.”

Antiope scoffs. “Pity. He has bedded many mortals and sired many half-bloods. Surely, he knows his way about the arts of the bedchamber, and yet you wasted your one chance. Did he not seduce a woman in the guise of a swan once?”

Hippolyta does not deign to respond to the impertinence.)

 

 

**2.**

Hippolyta’s insistence of the babe’s status as a weapon vanishes the moment Diana draws her first breath in a cry, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the clarion announcing the birth of their princess.

The war was not so long ago, and there is much to be done. Building a nation from the grounds up, with no allies but themselves, no neighbor but the ever-present fog wall, is no mean task. There are farms to grow, houses to build, laws to write. They are too accustomed to the ways of the war that peace has left them unsure.

It is with these excuses that Hippolyta convinced herself that Diana should not start her training just yet.

Oh, her education is overseen very closely: languages, hundreds and hundreds of them; astronomy, botany, and other studies of nature; philosophy, politics, and government; music, dancing, and carving; and many skills of different professions. She even spends a week with the smith, emerging with a dagger she makes herself and declaring that wonderful though her week has been, she does not like the heat very much.

Her education is complete but in one aspect, and in denying Diana combat training, Hippolyta drives her daughter into eventually escaping her lessons and watch the warriors train. The absence of one lesson ruins the others, and soon Diana’s tutors quit one by one, unable to instruct an unwilling subject and bear the queen’s disappointment.

Antiope can bear it no longer. Diana must be trained to fight, and she must take her other lessons seriously. She slips a note under Diana’s bed and waits in the cave at the northern shore.

Antiope does not have to wait very long. Diana arrives, panting, smiling wide.

“Is it true, Antiope? You will train me?”

“Stand straight,” Antiope orders.

Diana complies immediately, adjusting her stance to mimic the other warriors she saw training.

“I will train you, under three conditions. One: your mother is not to know.”

To this, Diana nods vigorously, no doubt aware that her mother will not approve.

“Two: you will stop running from your lessons.”

Diana pouts, but says nothing.

“Three: you will obey my every order. I am your general. In battles, failure to obey the general results in death.”

Diana’s brows furrow. “But what if the general orders the soldier to die and the soldier does not want to?”

“Then the soldier might not die, but others will as a result of that soldier’s refusal. Understood?”

Diana’s eyes go very, very wide. “Yes, general!”

Antiope smiles. “Good. Now, your first training. When you are not at your lessons or in the company of your mother, you will run from me.”

“Running?” Diana protests. “Warriors don’t run.”

“Right now, Diana, if you fight anyone, much less me, you will lose. And so, you will run.”

“Until when?”

“Until three days pass without me catching you. Well—”

Diana does not wait until Antiope finishes the sentence.

 

 

(Years later, Antiope walks into the parlor and comes face-to-face with a bemused Hippolyta.

“Diana came in, tore through an apricot, and called you a tyrant.”

Antiope throws herself down on one of the pillowed seats. “I imagine she did.”

“I approve, of course,” says Antiope, extending one hand to touch her sister’s. “I told you to train her harder than any Amazon, and if you trained her leniently she would not be so frustrated.”

“She is so much stronger than she thinks she is. If only she knows what she is—”

Hippolyta pulls back her hand. “No. I will not allow it.”

“Sister, you cannot conceal the truth forever.”

“She is a child, yet. Maybe later, when she comes of age.”)

 

 

**3.**

Diana crosses her vambraces and something erupts, a wave, a gust of wind hard enough and solid enough to be a wall, dropping everyone at the training field to the ground.

Antiope’s head is bleeding; she can feel her hair soaking up blood from the cut. Menalippe does not let Diana come closer, but between the ache all over her body and the dizzying nausea Antiope feels pride. This is the Diana unknown to anyone but Antiope, and had her body allowed her she would run and embrace her child.

Her child.

All grown, and hers as much as Hippolyta’s. When Hippolyta was blinded by love and fear, it was Antiope that took Diana’s hand and taught her how to protect herself and her kin. For decades, she trained Diana for the inevitability, and today Diana has bested her and the rest of the island.

There is nothing more Antiope can teach Diana in the art of war.

 

 

(Not an hour later, Antiope stands with her army to fight these mortals, and they are outmatched if not for their weapons that sound like thunder and send arrows unseen. Their armor is useless against this invention, and with grief she watches her warriors fall, one by one.

Then one of them levels his weapon at Diana, and Antiope moves as if compelled by the gods themselves, and in her mind, she thinks _no, please no, she is a child, yet._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Why. Does. The. Mentor. Always. Die.
> 
> Anyway, do comment and tell me what you think!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Queen's General](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212468) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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